Genesis Rising (The Genesis Project Book 1)

by S. M. Schmitz

  “I can get us automatic rifles and machine guns. Lots of them. Maybe some explosives, too, but we’re limited in what we know how to use,” Cade answered.

  I finally looked away from my ex-girlfriend-turned-Black-Widow and gaped at my friend. “Where are you going to get us that?”

  “I figured I’ve already been charged with stealing government property, so what’s a little shopping on the black market?”

  “But why do you know people who sell weapons that are illegal for civilians to own?” I asked.

  What had Cade been doing in his free time besides getting drunk? I wasn’t sure if I should be horrified or relieved since whatever questionable connection he had could potentially arm us for breaking and entering a highly secure government-backed building that was likely crawling with military personnel now.

  “I just know people,” he responded flippantly.

  “And where is the money going to come from?” I pressed.

  “We’ll owe him. He’ll know I’m good for it,” he answered. “If I live long enough, but I think I’ll leave that part out.”

  “God,” Saige groaned, “you’re getting us involved with the Mafia, aren’t you?”

  “Not the Mafia,” Cade insisted.

  “Drug dealers?” I asked.

  “Possibly, but you know I don’t do drugs so I’m not sure.”

  “Cade, who the hell is this guy?” I demanded.

  “Former SEAL. He was near retirement when I met him and even then, dude wasn’t quite right in the head. He’s probably got an honest-to-God underground bunker either for a second civil war or a zombie apocalypse. Neither fear would surprise me.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “You want to involve us with a psycho because that’s what we need right now.”

  “We need weapons,” Cade pointed out. “And Donaldson is armed to the teeth. Illegally but who gives a shit?”

  I glanced at Saige then took a deep breath, resigning myself to the fact that I had no better alternative. Hell, I didn’t even have an alternative.

  “How will we contact him, and how will we get out of here?” I asked.

  “I still have my cellphone,” Cade said. “Yeah, they’ll be listening, but they’ll follow us everywhere anyway until we figure out how to destroy every program they use to trace you. And getting out of here? Edwards has an old Dodge out back he used when he went deer hunting. There’s a dirt road that cuts through the woods and leads back to the highway. His stand is actually about four miles away, so he’d drive out there, park on the side of the road, and walk to his stand.”

  “Fascinating,” I interrupted, “but that doesn’t tell me how we’re getting to his truck or out of this forest.”

  “Asshole,” Cade reminded me. “And you’re going to walk to his truck then drive it through the back of his cabin.”

  “He’s going to what?” Saige shouted.

  “Get in Edwards’ truck and drive it into the cabin,” Cade repeated, as if Saige really hadn’t heard him.

  I squinted at him and retorted, “You’re either insane or brilliant. I’m leaning toward insane.”

  Cade just nodded. “I’m only insane if it doesn’t work.”

  “True,” I conceded.

  Cade got off the sofa and opened a cabinet in the kitchenette. I heard the jingling of keys then he tossed them to me. “I helped replace a section of drywall last year. It’s just a hunting cabin so he wasn’t terribly worried about building a sound structure. There are no support beams right past the backdoor and for about six feet to the west of it. Aim for that section and don’t miss.”

  “That’s… a really narrow window,” I muttered. The truck had to be close to six feet across, which meant I had no room for error or I’d be destroying our getaway vehicle and potentially killing myself in the process.

  “Like I said, don’t miss.”

  I sighed and pushed myself off the sofa, allowing myself to look in Saige’s direction one last time. She looked just as shocked as I felt about what Cade had just told me to do. I moved toward the backdoor, but she grabbed my arm before I could reach it. I looked down at her, surprised – perhaps even more surprised than I had been about Cade’s announcement I should just drive a truck through a building – and her fingers gently slid down my arm until they traced the thin, pink scar from the incision I’d made to remove the magnets and microchip.

  “Don’t miss, Drake,” she said quietly.

  “I have to get to the truck first,” I reminded her. “Let’s just hope they don’t shoot me again.”

  She flinched but let go of my arm and looked away from me again.

  “Hurry up,” Cade chastised. “We don’t have all day.”

  I reminded him he was an asshole before opening the door and exposing myself to the armed men I knew were out there waiting for me.

  Chapter 15

  The old red Dodge truck was only fifteen feet from the back door, but the doors were likely locked and I’d have to stand outside fumbling with keys to get it open. Of course, I was standing in an open doorway: someone, or multiple someones, likely already had me in their crosshairs. There was nothing I could do except run.

  I’d just reached the driver’s side door when a bullet whizzed beside my head and shattered the glass in the window. I grimaced as shards fell on my arms, cutting and nicking the skin, but with no more glass in the window, I was able to reach inside and pull up the lock. Another bullet shattered the windshield as a new warning message stampeded through my mind.

  You are surrounded, Drake. There’s nowhere to go. You have forced me to order the execution of Cade Daniels and Saige Deshotel. They will not be allowed to reach the truck. There is still hope for you. Put your hands above your head and step away from the vehicle.

  Of course, I ignored him.

  I jammed the key into the ignition and in the all-too-brief second of assessing the back of the cabin, I gauged the section of drywall that wouldn’t have support beams running down it then slammed my foot onto the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward, and the snipers around me must have been too damn surprised that I’d thrown the truck into drive rather than reverse to respond right away.

  Even Parker’s incessant messages momentarily fell silent.

  The truck barreled into the cabin. I didn’t have time to put on my seatbelt, and the impact threw my chest into the steering wheel, taking my breath away. Pieces of wood flew inward, some landing on top of the hood and roof of the truck with a loud ka-thunk ka-thunk. But more importantly, the passenger side door swung open, and Saige jumped in, followed closely by Cade.

  My chest felt like I had a gorilla sitting on me, but I threw the truck into reverse and hit the gas again while yelling at Saige and Cade to get down on the floorboards. The rear window shattered as several bullets crashed through the cab of the truck, one of them implanting into the dashboard. I’d never driven a truck in reverse down a narrow dirt road in the middle of a forest, but I didn’t have time to turn around. And to make matters worse, Parker decided to inundate my mind again with his ridiculous messages that he must have known I had every intention of ignoring.

  The rear tires dipped off the side of the road and I jerked the truck back onto the narrow path. Cade hit his head on the glove compartment and cursed at me, but it’s not like I’d been programmed with the knowledge of how to drive backwards in an emergency getaway while people were shooting at me.

  Hell, I hadn’t even been programmed with the knowledge of how to drive forward in a getaway while people were shooting at me. Considering I hadn’t run into any trees yet, I thought I was doing pretty well.

  Bullets shattered the front windshield, which told me I’d passed the point where the snipers had hidden. Hopefully, we’d soon be out of their range or at least obscured by the thick pine trees. Cade looked up at me and told me I needed to turn the truck around, so I told him he should come take my place then.

  And that bastard actually crawled over me and told me to get out of the way
.

  The truck drifted toward the edge of the trees as I slid across the seat. I braced myself for another hard impact, but Cade cut the wheel and hit the gas again. I careened into the passenger door and hit my shoulder, but I couldn’t even yell at him for it. He’d actually gotten the truck turned around and we were driving forward through the woods. I peeked behind us because over the rumbling of our truck’s motor, I could hear the pursuit that was now underway.

  With the twisting road and the tightly packed pine trees, I couldn’t see the vehicles chasing us though so I turned around again and looked at Saige who still crouched on the floorboards. She looked unharmed, but I slowly reached down to check on her anyway. I expected her to hit me and yell at me, but when my fingers brushed against her arm, she didn’t even jerk away from me. Her pale gray-blue eyes studied me as I carefully brushed the glass from her skin.

  “Are you all right?” she finally asked.

  I nodded even though I thought I might have cracked a rib.

  “Can I get off the floor yet?”

  “Well… nobody’s shot at us in like… a minute,” I said. “You might be safe for a good thirty seconds.”

  Saige rolled her eyes but pressed her palms against the seat to lift herself beside me. The truck’s right tire dipped into a hole in the dirt road and jostled us, and I cringed as my chest protested against the sudden movement. Saige’s hand reached out and grabbed my left arm, but I no longer pulled away from her when her fingers got dangerously close to the black mark there. It had no secrets left to hide.

  “What now?” she asked. “You’re hurt again.”

  “It’s nothing,” I assured her. “Probably just a cracked rib.”

  “Yep,” Cade said, nodding as if cracked bones were a regular topic of conversation among us, “those hurt like a bitch.”

  Saige sighed in his direction then asked if I thought it might be broken. I shrugged. “Don’t know. Never had a cracked or broken rib before. How could I tell the difference?”

  “Pretty sure they can’t do anything for it anyway,” Cade added.

  “Can you not talk for a little while?” Saige asked him.

  Cade leaned around her to ask me, “Remind me again why I agreed to help her?”

  “Because you knew that request had come from me,” I told him. “And there’s a reason I trust you.”

  Cade grunted in response, but Saige ignored him. Her fingers lightly trailed down my arm again until they rested on the faint pink scar beneath the now useless port. “Why’d you do it?”

  “I had to,” I explained, but Saige stopped me.

  “No, I mean, why did you lie to me? Why’d you make up an entire life for yourself that never existed?”

  I watched her fingers as they gently stroked the mark on my arm that I’d never be able to remove completely. But I’d at least excised it from my beliefs that this was what kept me from being human.

  Despite every muscle in my body aching from the constant ordeals I kept finding myself in and despite the cracked rib that made breathing hurt like hell, her soft touch against my arm still turned me on. I put my hand over hers and took a deep breath. “Because I was ashamed of what I am.”

  Saige met my eyes and her hand slowly flipped over to grasp mine. Suddenly, I forgot about the pain or the incessant noise in my mind. There was only her.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have known how to deal with it. But how am I supposed to trust someone who never trusted me enough to find out?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “But I won’t ask you to forgive me when I can’t even forgive myself. I just want to protect you now.”

  Saige glanced in Cade’s direction so I looked at him, too. He kept his eyes on the road in front of him and pretended he couldn’t hear us.

  “I’m sorry I accused you of potentially turning on us,” she whispered back. “I was hurt and angry, but when I called Cade and met him at the bus station and explained what you’d said and done, he couldn’t believe it at first. He said it was impossible for you to override those commands.”

  “It always had been before,” I admitted.

  “Then what changed?”

  “You.”

  Saige lifted her other hand and touched my cheek, and I stopped breathing. I couldn’t allow myself to believe she still loved me after all I’d done to her.

  “And do you really think if we miraculously succeed and destroy the Project’s ability to get in your head, you could be normal?” She shook her head quickly and added, “I mean, it won’t start up again? This time, without you being able to fight back?”

  “It’s not enough to destroy the Project we know about. We have to get Parker and find out where any backup systems are and destroy them, too. And we’ll have to kill Parker himself.”

  “It’s just three of us, and I’m not even trained for this kind of shit,” Saige said. “It’s impossible.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “But our only alternative is surrender, and that’s not an option.”

  Saige let her hand fall and I remembered to breathe. A small smile gradually replaced the serious expression she’d been studying me with, and she said, “So it’s die lying down or fighting.”

  “Exactly,” I responded, a small smile replacing my own serious and hopeless expression.

  Saige’s fingers tightened around my hand and her smile widened. “Ok, Drake. Then at least I’ll die fighting with you.”

  Jake Donaldson lived in another stretch of isolated woods in the middle-of-nowhere east Virginia. As we approached his front door, I tried to stay in front of Saige, just in case this has-to-be-crazy former SEAL decided to shoot trespassers on the spot. Cade caught me and shook his head at me.

  “You’re such a dumbass,” he teased.

  I nodded toward the steel door and retorted, “Tell me he’s not the kind of guy who lives alone in the middle of a forest and keeps himself barricaded behind a steel door.”

  Cade waved me off. “Nothing wrong with being cautious.”

  “No, but there is something wrong with being overly paranoid,” I mumbled.

  Cade knocked on the door and I backed away from it, keeping Saige behind me. I listened anxiously as the locks on the door slid out of place. So far, he hadn’t shot at us at least. I mean, Cade had called to warn him we were coming, but he’d waited until we were minutes away since we knew the Project would be listening to his conversation. And we also knew they’d followed me here.

  I couldn’t imagine why Jake had agreed to help us. Cade had been honest with him and told him what I am and that we were being followed, but for some reason, Jake had told him he’d still be willing to let us in. I had a horrible suspicion Cade already knew why, and that it would involve some sort of repayment that had nothing to do with money.

  The door swung open and a man who looked to be in his late forties stood in the doorway. “Hurry up before they blow my goddamn head off,” he barked.

  We hurried inside because none of us wanted our heads blown off.

  Cade didn’t bother introducing us or wasting time on unnecessary pleasantries.

  “We need whatever machine guns and sniper rifles you can spare,” Cade said. “If I live through the next twelve hours, I’ll owe you.”

  Jake snorted and crossed his arms over his burly chest. “And what makes you think you can repay me?”

  “Because we both know it’s not money you’re after. You want mercenaries, and we’ll work for free an equivalent amount of time to the value of the weapons you’re handing over.”

  Jake’s eyes quickly roved over me before he attempted to peek behind my back. I wrapped my fingers around Saige’s arms and pulled her closer to me. “Not her,” I immediately insisted.

  Jake laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that was both infectious yet unnerving, and shook his head. “What good would a girl like that do me?”

  “Hey!” Saige protested, but I hushed her because I didn’t trust this guy any farther than the range of whatever rifle he ag
reed to place in my hands.

  “I’ve got a job recovering stolen cargo off the east coast of Africa, but no one will take it. I’ll give you what you need if you both accept the recovery mission,” Jake continued, ignoring Saige’s brief protest, much to my relief.

  “Deal,” Cade immediately said. I wanted to hit him for accepting on my behalf, too, without knowing anything about what we’d be recovering and from whom.

  Ok, fine. I did hit him.

  “Dude!” Cade yelled, rubbing his arm.

  “Stop speaking for me,” I hissed. “I can make up my own mind now, and I don’t have to follow your orders.”

  “So you were really some sort of RoboCop, huh?” Jake asked.

  “No,” I answered. “RoboCop is a cyborg. And a cop. And fake. I was just genetically engineered, grown in a lab, kept in some sort of coma until The Genesis Project decided to wake me up, and had a handful of microchips implanted in an attempt to control my behavior.”

  “That… was a really long explanation,” Jake said.

  I just shrugged. That was the short version, actually.

  “Then who’s the girl?” he asked.

  “My ex-girlfriend whom they want dead now,” I said.

  Saige stepped around me and narrowed her eyes. “Ex? So you’re dumping me on top of everything else?”

  I blinked at her and opened my mouth then had to close it again. I was too stunned to even fumble with words.

  Cade sighed and rolled his eyes at me. “I think what my dumbass friend meant to say is, ‘You’re not dumping me?’”

  Saige raised an eyebrow at me as if to ask if Cade were right.

  “Aren’t you?” I finally managed to croak out.

  “Well,” Saige said, planting her hands on her hips in that way of hers I’d always found so adorably sexy, “I should. But I believe you when you say you never thought it would endanger my life, and you’ve done the impossible for me, just to try to save me. Nobody’s ever loved me that much.” Saige dropped her eyes and stared at the tips of her shoes. “And I’ve never loved anyone this much.”

  “Saige,” I breathed. I reached for her, but Jake, the asshole, interrupted me.